Staff Software Engineer, Backend (Search)

Affirm

Confirmed live yesterday High trust

Remote

Quick summary

Work type: Remote
Location: Remote
Salary: $230,000–$290,000 / yr
Posted: 51 days ago
Freshness: Confirmed live yesterday

Market check

Salary context

Above market

How this pay compares to similar roles

Similar $215k

This role $260k

$163k most similar roles pay here $304k

This role pays more than 90% of similar roles. Most pay $192,050–$238,250 — the shaded band above. At the midpoint, this role pays about $260k versus about $215k for comparable roles.

Based on 240 similar postings.

Employer

About Affirm

Affirm is a buy-now, pay-later (BNPL) financial technology company that offers point-of-sale installment loans to consumers, allowing them to split purchases into fixed monthly payments with transparent terms. Industry: Financial Technology & Consumer Lending

Affirm currently has 60 open roles on FindRole.

Listed pay typically runs $195,000–$255,000 across 60 roles with salary data.

Most-posted roles

View all roles at Affirm

At a glance

TL;DR · Staff Software Engineer, Backend (Search)

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Staff Software Engineer, Backend (Search) joins a new team focused on building search and recommendation experiences for an advertising platform and marketplace. This role involves setting long-term technical strategy, managing project trade-offs with product and design partners, and acting as a force multiplier by defining operational processes and code standards. The engineer will oversee system availability through monitoring and triage rotations while mentoring teammates and advocating for high-quality engineering practices. Candidates must have experience building distributed systems using Python or Kotlin, along with expertise in AWS, MySQL, Spark, and Kubernetes. Experience with React is also required. The role specifically addresses the technical challenges of discovery, comparison, and merchant value within a search and recommendation engine context to create an agentic platform for consumers.

What does a Software Engineer earn in Remote?

Median $204500 from 415 postings across 57 companies.

See salary data

Skills

Python Kotlin AWS MySQL Spark Kubernetes React Distributed Systems Recommendation Engines Monitoring Alerting Code Review

What you'll do

Set technical strategy for the team on a year-long scale aligned with business goals.
Manage technical sustainability, risks, and trade-offs during the product development lifecycle.
Define and advocate for technical solutions and operational processes to act as a force multiplier.
Own team operations including monitoring, triage rotations, playbooks, and alerting systems.
Establish and enforce code review and design standards across the engineering organization.
Mentor and develop team talent through consistent feedback and guidance.
Design and launch high-availability distributed backend systems at scale.
Develop search and recommendation engine features to improve discovery and monetization.

What we're looking for

You must have 8+ years of experience designing, developing, and launching backend systems at scale using Python or Kotlin.
You must have an extensive track record of developing highly available distributed systems using AWS, MySQL, Spark, and Kubernetes.
You should have experience developing consumer experiences using UI frameworks like React.
You must have 2+ years of experience working in search or related recommendation engines.
You must be able to deliver major features and system components through defined technical and execution plans.
You must possess strong verbal and written communication skills for collaboration with a global engineering team.
This position requires a Bachelor’s degree in a related field or equivalent practical experience.

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